3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) long-term evolution (LTE) is a technology for enabling high-speed packet communications. Many schemes have been proposed for the LTE objective including those that aim to reduce user and provider costs, improve service quality, and expand and improve coverage and system capacity. The 3GPP LTE requires reduced cost per bit, increased service availability, flexible use of a frequency band, a simple structure, an open interface, and adequate power consumption of a terminal as an upper-level requirement.
Work has started in international telecommunication union (TU) and 3GPP to develop requirements and specifications for new radio (NR) systems. 3GPP has to identify and develop the technology components needed for successfully standardizing the new RAT timely satisfying both the urgent market needs, and the more long-term requirements set forth by the ITU radio communication sector (ITU-R) international mobile telecommunications (IMT)-2020 process. Further, the NR should be able to use any spectrum band ranging at least up to 100 GHz that may be made available for wireless communications even in a more distant future.
The NR targets a single technical framework addressing all usage scenarios, requirements and deployment scenarios including enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine-type-communications (mMTC), ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC), etc. The NR shall be inherently forward compatible.
There are various downlink control information (DCI) formats used in LTE in a control channel. The DCI format is a predefined format in which the DCI is packed/formed and transmitted in the control channel. The DCI formats tell a user equipment (UE) how to transmit/receive its data on a data channel. So, based on the DCI format transmitted in the control channel, a UE can transmit/receive data. The DCI format gives the UE, details such as number of resource blocks, resource allocation type, modulation scheme, transport block, redundancy version, coding rate etc.
NR may also use DCI formats. But, enhancements for DCI formats should be required to reflect the features of NR.